Joe Rogan Experience #1628 - Eric Weinstein

1. 0:00 – 5:13

   Toasts, Clubhouse hype, and why podcasting can’t be “killed”

   1. EWEric Weinstein0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. NANarrator0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (upbeat music) Boom.

   4. NANarrator0:16

      Salud, my friend.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:16

      Oh, mazel tov. (glasses clink)

   6. EWEric Weinstein0:18

      Na zdorovie.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:19

      Oh. Those are the only ones I know.

   8. EWEric Weinstein0:23

      Yeah?

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:23

      I don't know another, uh-

   10. EWEric Weinstein0:24

       Sherifin is eg?

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:25

       ... salute.

   12. NANarrator0:26

       L'chaim.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:26

       Mazel tov, l'chaim, uh, na zdorovie. What are th- what's the other one?

   14. EWEric Weinstein0:30

       Skol.

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:30

       It's gotta be.

   16. EWEric Weinstein0:31

       What's that? Skol.

   17. JRJoe Rogan0:32

       What's skol?

   18. EWEric Weinstein0:33

       Skol, I don't know. Is that-

   19. NANarrator0:34

       Viking.

   20. EWEric Weinstein0:35

       ... Swedish, German, something.

   21. JRJoe Rogan0:36

       Is that a Viking one?

   22. NANarrator0:37

       Yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan0:37

       Oh.

   24. NANarrator0:38

       Slàinte or, uh, Irish-

   25. JRJoe Rogan0:40

       Use your microphone, fella.

   26. EWEric Weinstein0:41

       (laughs)

   27. NANarrator0:41

       Sl- I don't know how to say it. Slàinte, or-

   28. JRJoe Rogan0:43

       What is that one?

   29. NANarrator0:43

       ... the Irish one.

   30. JRJoe Rogan0:44

       Oh, I don't know that one.
2. 5:13 – 7:19

   Meaning scarcity online: status, moderators, and “proxy meaning” during COVID

   1. EWEric Weinstein5:13

      People are weak.

   2. JRJoe Rogan5:14

      But why does any- wh- but why does anybody want to be the moderator?

   3. EWEric Weinstein5:17

      Because they-

   4. JRJoe Rogan5:17

      That's not good.

   5. EWEric Weinstein5:18

      It's horrible. There's an actual status and caste system of people who need more going on in their lives, like-

   6. JRJoe Rogan5:24

      Mm-hmm.

   7. EWEric Weinstein5:24

      ... "I was called up on stage. I was made a moderator."

   8. JRJoe Rogan5:27

      Yeah.

   9. EWEric Weinstein5:27

      And then you realize that, you know, for people whose lives have gone online due to COVID, meaning has been scarce. And so, in a weird way, this is what's proxying for meaning.

   10. JRJoe Rogan5:37

       Yeah.

   11. EWEric Weinstein5:37

       'Cause the human mind will just attach meaning to any kind of distinction like that.

   12. JRJoe Rogan5:41

       For a lot of comics, it's replaced performing, so they're not going up at night, but they're going into Clubhouse every night, and they'll jump in the room-

   13. EWEric Weinstein5:48

       Le- Leah Lamar, for example, is really-

   14. JRJoe Rogan5:50

       Yeah.

   15. EWEric Weinstein5:50

       ... uh, really active, and I, you know, what I told her was, "Pioneer something new. Don't try to do something old. Figure out what this new thing is better at, and be the first."

   16. JRJoe Rogan6:00

       Well, she has a lot of people on that, right?

   17. EWEric Weinstein6:02

       Yeah, a lot.

   18. JRJoe Rogan6:02

       She's- A lot more than she has on the other platforms.

   19. EWEric Weinstein6:06

       I think she's- she's doing really well and she's doing a lot of stuff, and what I hope is that, um...... you know, she'll pioneer something genuinely new. Like for example, radio drama was dying when I was a kid. There was the CBS Radio Mystery Hour or something.

   20. JRJoe Rogan6:19

       Hmm.

   21. EWEric Weinstein6:19

       We used to listen to that when we'd drive up to-

   22. JRJoe Rogan6:21

       I used to love those.

   23. EWEric Weinstein6:22

       Yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan6:23

       They were cool.

   25. EWEric Weinstein6:23

       Right. And-

   26. JRJoe Rogan6:24

       That's gone. You know with a bunch of people acting out voices.

   27. EWEric Weinstein6:27

       E.G. Marshall was the host of those things and it was like a throwback to Orson Wells and that stuff.

   28. JRJoe Rogan6:32

       Hmm.

   29. EWEric Weinstein6:33

       Wouldn't it be cool to get some retro thing? Because the, the idea behind Clubhouse is to take Discord and subtract functionality (laughs) from it and that's the product. It's less, it's got less functionality than Discord and that causes you to ha- say, "Okay, well, I can't text you. How am I gonna work around all these constraints?" And it's like, you know, a great wine is only supposedly grown when you frustrate the vines.

   30. JRJoe Rogan6:55

       Really?
3. 7:19 – 13:25

   Wine world nonsense and the ‘Sour Grapes’ counterfeit scandal

   1. JRJoe Rogan7:19

      Have you seen the documentary Sour Grapes?

   2. EWEric Weinstein7:21

      No.

   3. JRJoe Rogan7:21

      Oh my God.

   4. EWEric Weinstein7:22

      Tell me.

   5. JRJoe Rogan7:22

      You have to watch it. Um, I-

   6. EWEric Weinstein7:24

      Are you a wine guy?

   7. JRJoe Rogan7:25

      No. I like wine. I, I actually love wine. I don't know a fucking damn thing about it. I just go, "That's good." And I take pictures of it on my phone when I like it and then I buy that wine later.

   8. EWEric Weinstein7:36

      (laughs)

   9. JRJoe Rogan7:36

      I don't know what the fuck's going on. I'm, I'm, I'm as clueless-

   10. EWEric Weinstein7:39

       You know that really nobody does? Almost nobody.

   11. JRJoe Rogan7:42

       That's what the documentary's about. The documentary's amazing and it's about this guy who got in with all these real rich wine connoisseurs.

   12. EWEric Weinstein7:52

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan7:52

       Including a friend of mine who's in the film.

   14. EWEric Weinstein7:55

       Oh no.

   15. JRJoe Rogan7:55

       Yes.

   16. EWEric Weinstein7:56

       (laughs)

   17. JRJoe Rogan7:56

       Yeah, um, and this guy realized that there is only a limited amount of rare wine. Like 1974 blah, blah, blah.

   18. EWEric Weinstein8:07

       Right, right, right.

   19. JRJoe Rogan8:09

       So this dude decides he is going to fake this wine, and so he makes these labels.

   20. EWEric Weinstein8:17

       Uh-huh.

   21. JRJoe Rogan8:17

       He m- And apparently this gentleman who's featured in this film who wound up getting arrested and he's in jail right now in Colorado and apparently they're, um, they're detaining him. They're, they're about to deport him 'cause he's about to get outta jail. They're gonna deport him back to Indonesia, which is where he's from. But he... I think it's Indonesia. He had an amazing palate. He was a, like, he was a real legitimate wine collector. And then somewhere along the line, he realized that buying and selling wine was good 'cause he was kinda quartering the market on a lot of wines. He was spending a ton of money. He realized, "You know what? I can fake these wines. I understand what th- these wines are." So he started mixing wines together and he m- c- developed all these formulas about how to mix, like, cheaper wines and he would sell them as, like, these gr- super rare, you know, 1970 whatever wines. But where he fucked up is, spoiler alert, one of the Koch brothers-

   22. EWEric Weinstein9:14

       Mm-hmm.

   23. JRJoe Rogan9:14

       ... bought like $4 million worth of wine from him and one of his friends started... Uh, he had a friend who was an investigator of wine, apparently that's a thing.

   24. EWEric Weinstein9:23

       Wine investigator.

   25. JRJoe Rogan9:24

       Guy who, uh, really understands wine was telling him, no, you know, like, he bought bottles from Thomas Jefferson-

   26. EWEric Weinstein9:29

       Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan9:29

       ... like from the 1700s.

   28. EWEric Weinstein9:30

       Well, Chateau d'Yquem of Jefferson I think is still drinkable.

   29. JRJoe Rogan9:34

       Really?

   30. EWEric Weinstein9:35

       Well, there's this one particular kind of Sauternes which comes from the Semillon grape in the Bordeaux region or, uh, and it's made from this noble rot so you get the grapes to sort of have this disease that concentrates the sugar, and I believe that Chateau d'Yquem is, like, weirdly drinkable beyond...
4. 13:25 – 14:38

   How tasting actually works: retronasal smell, wine ritual, and sensory hacks

   1. EWEric Weinstein13:25

      So, the thing that I did not understand, I think, about wine is that if you're trying to taste your wine, you can't possibly get at what's this high-end stuff, because it's only your nose that can determine the- these differences.

   2. JRJoe Rogan13:40

      Mm-hmm.

   3. EWEric Weinstein13:40

      That nobody's got enough stuff going on on their tongue to tell great wine. So you've got this thing called the retronasal passage in the back of your mouth.

   4. JRJoe Rogan13:48

      Can I get a graph, Jamie? Retonal- nasals passage? Can you-

   5. EWEric Weinstein13:51

      Yeah, where do we-

   6. JRJoe Rogan13:52

      Can I get a graphic?

   7. EWEric Weinstein13:54

      ... where do we pull this up? Um, and so this whole thing about burbling, where you tu- you turn your mouth into a bong, right? Here.

   8. JRJoe Rogan14:00

      Oh, yeah?

   9. EWEric Weinstein14:00

      Let's do it.

   10. JRJoe Rogan14:01

       How you do it?

   11. EWEric Weinstein14:04

       (sighs)

   12. JRJoe Rogan14:04

       And they smell it?

   13. EWEric Weinstein14:05

       Well, y- you start... You're getting this fountain with air coming up, and then you're opening the back of your (laughs) ... You're opening your retronasal passage and-

   14. JRJoe Rogan14:13

       You do get a little bit of a smell.

   15. EWEric Weinstein14:14

       Right? And you... And that's where the magic happens. So the weird thing is somebody buys really expensive wine, and then they try to taste it.

   16. JRJoe Rogan14:22

       Ah, here we go.

   17. EWEric Weinstein14:23

       There we go.

   18. JRJoe Rogan14:23

       That's for beer.

   19. EWEric Weinstein14:24

       Well, it's for anything, like-

   20. JRJoe Rogan14:26

       I know, but, uh...

   21. EWEric Weinstein14:26

       Once, once you get-

   22. JRJoe Rogan14:26

       It's interesting.

   23. EWEric Weinstein14:27

       Once you get addicted to, um-

   24. JRJoe Rogan14:30

       Smelling shit?

   25. EWEric Weinstein14:30

       ... trying... Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan14:31

       Maybe that's like dudes are into smelling feet, like that's what's going on.

   27. EWEric Weinstein14:36

       You're not trapping me in that conversation.

5. 14:38 – 19:07

   Feet-fetish comedy and how Kill Tony develops new comics fast

   1. JRJoe Rogan14:38

      No, we had a, we had a th- a guy-

   2. EWEric Weinstein14:39

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan14:39

      ... at Kill Tony-

   4. EWEric Weinstein14:40

      Okay.

   5. JRJoe Rogan14:40

      ... who's really into feet. He was fucking hilarious. Were you there, Jamie, that night?

   6. NANarrator14:46

      I don't think so.

   7. JRJoe Rogan14:46

      It was, uh... K- Killed Tony recently at, uh, Anton's, and this, this kid went up. He was really funny. He was a funny comic. But he was really funny, and he was talking about how he's really into girls' feet.

   8. EWEric Weinstein14:57

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan14:57

      And it ma-... And he was, like, c- completely unapologetic. Like... And he, he was hilarious. And he was just talking about how th- he likes to smell girls' feet and we were all crying.

   10. EWEric Weinstein15:06

       You notice how everybody else's attraction is weird, and whatever your thing is, it's like, "Yeah, I don't know. I'm just into it."

   11. JRJoe Rogan15:11

       Well, it was funny. I mean, it was definitely weird 'cause it's unusual-

   12. EWEric Weinstein15:14

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan15:15

       ... that someone would be... It's... I don't think it's unusual that guys are into feet. I think it's a lot more usual than you think. But I think what is unusual is that he was so, uh, open about expressing the fact that he was into feet in front of a group of strangers-

   14. EWEric Weinstein15:28

       Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan15:28

       ... in a one-minute set on Kill Tony. 'Cause Kill... Do you k- do you know how Kill Tony works?

   16. EWEric Weinstein15:33

       Not really.

   17. JRJoe Rogan15:34

       Kill Tony is, uh, the foundation... It was one of the foundations in, in co-... in Los Angeles, and I think it's gonna be the foundation in Austin, of the open mic community.

   18. EWEric Weinstein15:43

       Okay.

   19. JRJoe Rogan15:44

       Because it gives a comic one minute. He, the... Tony has... Tony Hinchcliffe d- developed the show, and him and Brian Redban, they do it together, and Tony has a hat. They shake the hat up, and they... Or a bucket. They reach in the bucket and they pull out a name.

   20. EWEric Weinstein15:58

       Okay.

   21. JRJoe Rogan15:58

       Random. And then that person doesn't know if they're gonna perform or not. There's maybe 30 people that throw their names in, and maybe five get to perform. And Tony pulls that name out, calls the guy or girl or nonbinary folk, and they come running onto the stage and they do one minute of standup.

   22. EWEric Weinstein16:15

       Got it.

   23. JRJoe Rogan16:15

       And this guy did one minute of standup about how-

   24. EWEric Weinstein16:17

       On feet.

   25. JRJoe Rogan16:18

       ... he gets hard-ons because of feet, and it was just hilarious. But he was talking about the smell of, of feet, and a girl got on stage and took her shoe off and he smelled her foot, and it was just... It was preposterous.

   26. EWEric Weinstein16:31

       Okay.

   27. JRJoe Rogan16:32

       But it's... It gives these comics an opportunity to, like... Th- uh, on that... at that night... I think it was me and Adam Egert that night, but it's like, Donnell Rawlings has been on. You know, all... Like, you name a com-... Do- Dom Irrera's a, a favorite guest. Like, gr- great comics are on it all the time. So there's a professional guest that sits there and talks to the comics, the comic does a set, and then we'll ask them... I've done it a bunch of times. We'll ask them questions-

   28. EWEric Weinstein16:58

       Yeah.

   29. JRJoe Rogan16:59

       ... like, "How long you been doing comedy?" Like, "What, what... Where'd you start?" W- you know, "What town did you start out in?" And then, then th- they tell you, "What are you doing now for money?" And, you know, they have great stories, and it's, it's fun, 'cause you get a chance to see the beginnings. And some of those comics have gone on, like Ali Macofsky, who has opened up for me in fucking arenas. She started out on Kill Tony.

   30. EWEric Weinstein17:19

       Okay.
6. 19:07 – 29:58

   Eric’s guitar resurgence: modeling amps, self-teaching, and welcoming communities

   1. EWEric Weinstein19:07

      He, he, he ... I don't wanna say anything negative but I've seen parts of it that have been really, really pretty good. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I'm, I'm, um ... I, I'm trying to figure out what happened to the guitar and what happened to COVID, uh, changing the world of guitar because everybody was indoors-

   2. JRJoe Rogan19:26

      COVID changed the world of guitar?

   3. EWEric Weinstein19:28

      Oh, yeah. Lots of people had time on their hands and no way to socialize.

   4. JRJoe Rogan19:31

      Oh, so they practiced.

   5. EWEric Weinstein19:31

      And, and, and the, and the amps have gotten wildly better.

   6. JRJoe Rogan19:34

      In the last year?

   7. EWEric Weinstein19:35

      Uh, I bought a, uh, a modeling amp, uh, for 250 bucks that changed my life from Positive Grid, called the Spark Amp. We were talking about it with Jamie and it is a replica of like, all the gear that real guys have, that hobbyists, like, don't even know what it is. I can play with it and it'll model all of these setups. So suddenly, like, I'm smarter and then, you know, this weird thing I was telling Jamie about.

   8. JRJoe Rogan20:01

      But this had to have been developed long in advance before COVID.

   9. EWEric Weinstein20:03

      It's been ... Y- yes, but it ... I think a $250 item that just blows your mind may be relatively new and there's, I think there's one coming from, um, oh, a Neural DSP. So th- th- there's like competing ... And, and J- and J- Jamie was talking about the Helix. So there's like, this collection of these things and I hadn't spent $300 on my rig for 30 years or something. And I did this and suddenly, um, a little bit more magic was like, available to me. And then I-

   10. JRJoe Rogan20:38

       Really?

   11. EWEric Weinstein20:38

       And then I put a, a brief clip of m- of myself playing on Instagram and I got contacted by like, some of the greatest guitarists in the effing world. When, when Tosin Abasi and, uh, Joe Robinson, uh, and Ryan Roxie of ... Who's the guitarist for like, Alex k- Alice Cooper, contact you and they're like ...

   12. JRJoe Rogan20:59

       This is you jamming. Let ... Give me some of this. Give me some of this, Jamie.

   13. EWEric Weinstein21:04

       (laughs)

   14. JRJoe Rogan21:04

       You jamming to Glen Beck? Is that what it says? (guitar music plays)

   15. EWEric Weinstein21:20

       That wasn't actually the one that-

   16. JRJoe Rogan21:22

       That's pretty fucking good.

   17. EWEric Weinstein21:23

       If you put the-

   18. JRJoe Rogan21:23

       And you're doing that without a pick.

   19. EWEric Weinstein21:25

       Well, the thing, I didn't, I-

   20. JRJoe Rogan21:25

       You're doing that with your fingernails.

   21. EWEric Weinstein21:26

       If there's another one, um, a li- yeah, that one.

   22. JRJoe Rogan21:31

       Is that one better?

   23. EWEric Weinstein21:31

       And I, I didn't know you were supposed to ... Yeah, you, you ... That was the one that did it, I think. (guitar music plays) Apparently you're supposed to use a pick, but I didn't know.

   24. JRJoe Rogan21:48

       (laughs)

   25. EWEric Weinstein21:54

       Basically I'm playing air guitar with a real guitar.

   26. JRJoe Rogan21:56

       That's really good, dude.

   27. EWEric Weinstein21:57

       Well, that's, that's the amp and the fact that somebody set up my strat.

   28. JRJoe Rogan22:02

       What do you mean by that you didn't know you were supposed to play with a pick?

   29. EWEric Weinstein22:04

       Dude, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing. And so-

   30. JRJoe Rogan22:07

       How did you learn how to do this?
7. 29:58 – 41:12

   Media credibility collapse: lab-leak framing, “limited hangouts,” and political homelessness

   1. EWEric Weinstein29:58

      But aren't we all struggling with this a little bit? Like, there's no part of the mainstream that looks at all credible to me anymore.

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:04

      Well, it's real wacky now, right? And here's a, here's a wacky one where the New York Times, um, is they, th- they're debunking this idea that the Wuhan lab may have been the source of COVID when they're... like, when all these different people are talking about it.

   3. EWEric Weinstein30:23

      You've been on this for forever.

   4. JRJoe Rogan30:24

      We have been on it forever. What it's, it's, it's extraordinary is the, The New York Times is still saying debunked claims with no evidence whatsoever. You know, Saagar Enjeti from the Rising and The Hill had this whole piece about it on his, uh, YouTube channel.

   5. EWEric Weinstein30:39

      I love what they're doing.

   6. JRJoe Rogan30:40

      They're the best. They're the best, because-

   7. EWEric Weinstein30:42

      Well he's got two channels. Have you been on-... either?

   8. JRJoe Rogan30:44

      Um, well I've, I've only had him on here and Kristol together.

   9. EWEric Weinstein30:48

      Okay.

   10. JRJoe Rogan30:48

       But what I liked about-

   11. EWEric Weinstein30:48

       By the way, that was, what you guys did right at the beginning of that, where they explained what happens... I didn't mean to cut you off, but-

   12. JRJoe Rogan30:53

       That's okay.

   13. EWEric Weinstein30:54

       Um, what happens in the cycle when your team wins and your team loses, and how b- they've both broken out of that, and they've thrown that away now.

   14. JRJoe Rogan31:00

       Yes. That was-

   15. EWEric Weinstein31:01

       That was-

   16. JRJoe Rogan31:01

       That, they, they are what we need.

   17. EWEric Weinstein31:02

       That, that was 10 minutes-

   18. JRJoe Rogan31:02

       Yeah.

   19. EWEric Weinstein31:03

       ... that I needed to hear, that you j- I thought you broke new, you, the three of you guys broke really new ground.

   20. JRJoe Rogan31:08

       They're what we need.

   21. EWEric Weinstein31:09

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan31:09

       The, the, there's a, a reasonable person on the left and a reasonable person on the right, and they're both committed to honesty above all. Right? They might have different philosophical perspectives-

   23. EWEric Weinstein31:18

       I think they're coming together. I think Kristol's coming towards Saagar because she's seeing-

   24. JRJoe Rogan31:22

       Yes.

   25. EWEric Weinstein31:23

       ... the rot on the left. And-

   26. JRJoe Rogan31:24

       Yes.

   27. EWEric Weinstein31:24

       What my hope is, is that she's going to be, um, a credible progressive who's rejecting all this nonsense progressivism.

   28. JRJoe Rogan31:33

       Yeah. I think, I think you're right. She's very smart and so is he, and the two of them together are wonderful.

   29. EWEric Weinstein31:38

       Right. What were you gonna say-

   30. JRJoe Rogan31:39

       They're magic.
8. 41:12 – 58:03

   Standards, merit, and woke compliance: from SEAL selection to speech “overhead”

   1. JRJoe Rogan41:12

      Well, that's how people feel about the military. They're, they're, they're lowering standards of military physical tests-

   2. EWEric Weinstein41:18

      Right.

   3. JRJoe Rogan41:19

      ... to, uh, enable more women to get involved-

   4. EWEric Weinstein41:22

      And the issue-

   5. JRJoe Rogan41:22

      ... or out-of-shape people.

   6. EWEric Weinstein41:24

      (laughs) The... That's what I want.

   7. JRJoe Rogan41:25

      (laughs)

   8. EWEric Weinstein41:26

      I want more septuagen- With no ageism in the Special Forces.

   9. JRJoe Rogan41:29

      Yeah. Mm, Jesus Christ. Well, uh, Tim Kennedy had a post about this recently because, um, there was someone who was, uh, who was hired by the Pentagon d- for some sort of diversity role.

   10. EWEric Weinstein41:42

       Right.

   11. JRJoe Rogan41:42

       And they just let him go because they found out that he had some posts, uh, that were very questionable on social media about Hitler and Trump, and then so they got rid of him. They moved him to a new... But, but the point was that there, there's no... Tim Kennedy's point was there's no room for the concept of diversity with trained killers. He was like, "Our job is killing people, where there's no room for woke politics or political correctness."

   12. EWEric Weinstein42:06

       (laughs)

   13. JRJoe Rogan42:06

       "Like, we're there to get shit done." What are you doing, Jimmy? You got something for us? I was looking for the story. Oh, he, he's like, "We're, our job is to get shit done and, and, and kill bad people."

   14. EWEric Weinstein42:15

       Right.

   15. JRJoe Rogan42:15

       "Like, there's no room for diversity. You know, we don't, we don't need to send a, uh, a fucking South Pacific trans man in to do the job because it would make everybody look good in the newspaper. Like, you get the best killer for the job, and they're the ones who complete the task." And-

   16. EWEric Weinstein42:30

       Well, so the idea is no relaxation of standards-

   17. JRJoe Rogan42:32

       Ruthless requirements.

   18. EWEric Weinstein42:33

       ... and totally open. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan42:34

       That's, I mean, that's what BUD/S is, right?

   20. EWEric Weinstein42:36

       Mm-hmm.

   21. JRJoe Rogan42:36

       When they, when they b- choose SEALs, it's a ruthless elimination of anybody that's gonna quit.

   22. EWEric Weinstein42:42

       Mm-hmm.

   23. JRJoe Rogan42:42

       And that, they, you need that. You can't, you can't lighten that up at all 'cause then you won't have SEALs.

   24. EWEric Weinstein42:48

       Right.

   25. JRJoe Rogan42:48

       You'll have some fake thing that you've, you've, you've created some, just... You know, it's like fight training or marathon running or... You, you can't say, you know, like, "You don't have to run the full 26 miles because, you know, you're a, uh, this or a that." You know? Like, no, you gotta fucking... This is the, this is the standard. This is what it is. The person who wins, wins. Like, that's how it goes. It's like, "You gotta get under three hours," or whatever the fuck, they can do it now. Isn't there a guy who could do it in two hours?... isn't there a dude? Isn't that the new, the new, uh-

   26. EWEric Weinstein43:19

       Who can do what in two hours?

   27. JRJoe Rogan43:20

       ... the marathon?

   28. EWEric Weinstein43:20

       Oh, yeah.

   29. JRJoe Rogan43:21

       Yeah, the, the new-

   30. NANarrator43:22

       Well, yeah, yeah, they made a way for him to break it in, like, seconds.
9. 58:03 – 1:07:21

   “Video game mode,” January 6 narratives, and why people snap into crowd roles

   1. EWEric Weinstein58:03

      Okay. I'm worried about something I'm calling video game mode, which is the more I stare at my screen and then I have to context switch between my screen and real life, my screen and real life-

   2. JRJoe Rogan58:12

      Yeah.

   3. EWEric Weinstein58:12

      ... the more real life feels like my screen, the more I can't tell the difference. And it's not that I'm dumb. It's that my pro- my evolutionary programming doesn't know anything about this screen.

   4. JRJoe Rogan58:22

      I know what you're saying.

   5. EWEric Weinstein58:23

      And what my concern is, is that we don't feel our own life and our own interest anymore. Like, we don't realize what we're doing. We imagine that we are characters in a video game. There's always a restart, there's always some exploit that y- y- you can use to start again. And I'm increasingly feeling like reality is slipping away from us because the phone... It's a little bit like what happened with porn. We thought that porn was going to habituate us to, like, nonstandard sexual practices, and to an extent it did. But I don't think what we really understood is, is that it was gonna rewire us so that it was very difficult f- to get aroused about anything because it changes your hedonic thresholds. I think the same thing is true for real, for real life versus the phone. The phone is, in some sense, so much more intense for most people that that environment starts to blot out the feeling of being fully alive.

   6. JRJoe Rogan59:20

      So you, you think that the reason why they were so desensitized-

   7. EWEric Weinstein59:25

      I can't say that because it's shock, it's-

   8. JRJoe Rogan59:27

      Yeah.

   9. EWEric Weinstein59:27

      ... a crazy situation, it's the first few seconds. Fog can be the explanation.

   10. JRJoe Rogan59:31

       Okay.

   11. EWEric Weinstein59:31

       However, I increasingly see people, like the Capitol Hill thing on January 6th, very clearly that woman was, you know, dealing with a loaded pistol, right? And you see the guy, uh, who's holding the gun take the finger and bring it inside the trigger guard, and then he goes back out, because he's like pointing it at her.

   12. JRJoe Rogan59:55

       Mm-hmm.

   13. EWEric Weinstein59:55

       And he understands what he's doing. It's like, "Please don't advance." And she, she has an idea that somehow she's protected because she's part of this romantic-

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:00:06

       Yeah.

   15. EWEric Weinstein1:00:07

       ... story in her own mind. And-

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:00:09

       Yeah, I see what you're saying.

   17. EWEric Weinstein1:00:09

       ... you know, I really believe that the Viking and, like, all of it, Trump, you know, and all of this stuff, people don't feel fully alive. They don't realize we are actually attacking the Capitol Building of the United States of America.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:00:23

       That they didn't realize what they were doing while they were doing it.

   19. EWEric Weinstein1:00:25

       I think the idea is we-

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:00:26

       I don't think that's true.

   21. EWEric Weinstein1:00:26

       ... we're in a sort, sort of live action role playing and I believe that, you know, sometimes people probably go into combat that way.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:00:34

       Maybe. I think those people genuinely thought that they were patriots.

   23. EWEric Weinstein1:00:38

       Yep.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:00:38

       And I also think a lot of them are genuinely not bright. There's a lot of those guys that I saw being interviewed where they were talking about why they were doing-

   25. EWEric Weinstein1:00:47

       I watched people come out of it. I watched people snap out. A lot of people were like, "The moment that I realized I was too far in," and then such and such. It was like a c-

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:00:54

       You get caught up in the crowd.

   27. EWEric Weinstein1:00:55

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:00:55

       Yeah.

   29. EWEric Weinstein1:00:55

       You get caught up in the, in the narrative.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:00:57

       But it's al- but also I watched people, like particularly that guy with the Buffalo hat on-
10. 1:07:21 – 1:27:59

    Geometric Unity surprise: Eric launches his ‘theory of everything’ in real time

    1. EWEric Weinstein1:07:21

       Speaking of which, I asked you for this date, April 1st. This is a favor to me.

    2. JRJoe Rogan1:07:26

       Yeah, why?

    3. EWEric Weinstein1:07:29

       I want you to have this. This is-

    4. JRJoe Rogan1:07:30

       What is this nonsense? You give me a stack of papers. You know I don't like reading.

    5. EWEric Weinstein1:07:34

       I- You're not gonna be able to read it.

    6. JRJoe Rogan1:07:36

       Oh, this is your n- your unity theory?

    7. EWEric Weinstein1:07:38

       This is the first...... a copy. It- it got to version 1.0. I want you to have it. And I wanted-

    8. JRJoe Rogan1:07:44

       Listen, you're, you lost me. There's all these equations in here and, "Jamie, take this and make something out of it." (laughs) What is this?

    9. EWEric Weinstein1:07:53

       I believe, and this is the, this is the hardest-

    10. JRJoe Rogan1:07:55

        Ah.

    11. EWEric Weinstein1:07:55

        This is the hardest part. Um-

    12. JRJoe Rogan1:07:59

        How do you have time to do this while you're still on Clubhouse?

    13. EWEric Weinstein1:08:02

        I'm not really on Clubhouse, it's a bot. (laughs)

    14. JRJoe Rogan1:08:04

        (laughs)

    15. EWEric Weinstein1:08:06

        Not that low-quality stuff I push out. Um, this is something that I've been uncomfortable about sharing. I've been in a, what I call the ice cave, for about 37 years, and I shared a little bit of it in 2013, and then I shared a little bit of it last year, April 1st. And I am coming to grips with a story, and in part, you don't know this, but you've been playing a large role in my thinking, um, about this. And-

    16. JRJoe Rogan1:08:36

        Well, that's a problem. (laughs)

    17. EWEric Weinstein1:08:38

        No. No. I reviewed this weird episode of you at the, at the store, when you took a break for seven years, and I looked at the courage that you had to do, that you had to have to do something unfunny in a funny context and I think it was an incredibly difficult situation, and I th- think I've been running from a similar situation my whole life. I don't wanna face certain unpleasant facts that are out of keeping with the joy that I feel, with the love, with the creativity that I feel, and I don't want to let certain kinds of negativity take over my life. And then I have this other thing which is, I leg- legitimately believe that if we are not very careful, theoretical physics is coming to an end, and I believe it is our only hope for getting outside the solar system. When you have Elon on and he talks about Mars or bust and all this kind of stuff, I cannot understand how mankind has gotten to the point where we are not spending our efforts trying to figure out how to spread out so that we don't self-extinguish on one, two, or three rocks. It just doesn't make a s- any sense to me. And the best hope we have is to go beyond Einstein, and we're, we're losing the belief that we're capable of it. We're so worried about the professional norms and humiliation and what's going to happen if we say something and our, what our colleagues are gonna say and all of this stuff that we're, we're self-censoring and we're silencing ourselves because we'd rather be in good standing on the Titanic than risk saying, "Holy shit, we're in an iceberg field. Let's think about how we're gonna survive this." And I've been being a pussy about this.

    18. JRJoe Rogan1:10:29

        Well, what is it? Explain what it is. What-

    19. EWEric Weinstein1:10:32

        But this-

    20. JRJoe Rogan1:10:32

        ... what does it, what is this thing that you j- you handed me? What is this?

    21. EWEric Weinstein1:10:36

        It is... Okay, this is the hardest thing for me to say because-

    22. JRJoe Rogan1:10:39

        Okay.

    23. EWEric Weinstein1:10:39

        ... I- I have to not hedge it. I think it's the theory of everything.

    24. JRJoe Rogan1:10:43

        And what do you mean by that?

    25. EWEric Weinstein1:10:47

        There is a moment where you have to say, "This I believe about a radical departure," and you don't wanna say it because you wanna hedge it. It is, i- Jamie, if you could bring that up and you go a little bit, uh, maybe two pages in.

    26. JRJoe Rogan1:11:05

        Is this available online so someone can peruse it?

    27. EWEric Weinstein1:11:07

        In fact, uh, okay, right there on the left. Uh, go down. That table. You see where it says x4?

    28. JRJoe Rogan1:11:18

        Yes.

    29. EWEric Weinstein1:11:19

        X4 is four parameters. It could be salty, sweet, sour, bitter. It could be low, uh, treble, medium, uh, bass, and volume. And the question that I took from Einstein was, can we generate the world, everything from something as innocuous as four parameters? And if you think about a fertilized egg, somebody can hand you a picture of an embryo in in vitro fertilization, and you're like, "Well, that's your, that's your child to be." You're like, "Get the fuck out." Well, that fertilized egg somehow self-assembles into something that you cannot even imagine, and that's a mystery. The question is, in some sense, can four parameters bootstrap itself and it- it... Jamie, if you go to the first picture, uh, of the two hands, the Escher sketch. Yeah. Yeah. That is this weird paradox. Can a piece of paper effectively will (laughs) two hands into drawing each other into existence? That's what I believe makes the theory of everything so difficult. I don't think it's the-

Episode duration: 3:17:14